Route reliability record
ATL→TUL
Atlanta to Tulsa
- Flights
- 1,582
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 674 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,582 ATL to TUL flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly ATL to TUL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 88.9%, against 84.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 73 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,546 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.15%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
84.9% on time across 1,582 flights
These figures cover 1,582 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ATL to TUL
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,582 | 84.9% | 68 min | 2.15% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on ATL to TUL
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 15 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am332 flights91.4%
- 11am–2pm347 flights84.8%
- 2pm–5pm341 flights83.4%
- 5pm–8pm197 flights76.4%
- 8pm–5am365 flights84.9%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.4% of the time, against 76.4% for the evening window. That is 15 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 12 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
July is the worst month at 77.1% on time, 12 points below June, the best at 89.5%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 146 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 82.3%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 55% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 55%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 55%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 8,699 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 15,933 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 91.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.15% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.13%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 674 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 88.2% on time across 1,582 flights, 3 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,582 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in TUL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. June runs 89.5% on time and July 77.1%, a swing of 12 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,546 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ATL to TUL questions
How often is ATL to TUL delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.1% of the 1,582 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is ATL to TUL compared with the rest of the country?
84.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ATL to TUL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 91.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 76.4%, 15 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are July delays on ATL to TUL?
July is the weakest month at 77.1% on time, compared with 89.5% in June. Across the year that is 12 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- TUL to ATL — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- ATL to LGA, a related route73.4%
- DFW to TUL, a related route72.3%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record84.9%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. ATL to TUL and TUL to ATL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.